Thursday, October 02, 2008

ABC-Clio Acquires Greenwood Publishing Rights

In a deal announced this morning, Houghton Harcourt Mifflin has agreed to grant ABC-Clio a perpetual license to use the imprints and publish the titles of Greenwood Publishing Group, including Greenwood Press, Praeger Publishers, Praeger Security International and Libraries Unlimited. The announcement goes on to say HHM will transfer certain intellectual property, contracts and assets to ABC-CLIO and that the agreement is effective immediately. Terms have not been announced.

From the announcement:

"By combining Greenwood Publishing’s impressive and extensive list of titles with our experience in publishing widely respected databases, reference books and eBooks, ABC-CLIO is expanding its role as a leader in the publishing industry,” said Ron Boehm, CEO, ABC-CLIO. “We believe that we will launch the next generation of high-quality reference, professional development and other resources for education and libraries.”

This looks like a good deal for ABC-CLIO. They gain a strong list of reference titles, a reputable publisher with a history of stable consistent operations and a reliable brand particularly in the library and educational community. Greenwood was part of Reed Elsevier for many years and was incorporated into the Harcourt business unit after Harcourt was purchased by Reed. That business was sold and Greenwood ended up at HHM.

Perhaps this is how deals will be done in the short term to compensate for the lack of credit.

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Michael Cairns

Michael Cairns has served as CEO and President of several technology and content-centric business supporting global media publishers, retailers and service providers. He can be reached at michael.cairns@outlook.com and is interested in executive management and consulting, board and/or advisory positions. I am currently Managing Director with Digital Prism Advisors where we advise clients on digital and business transformation.

My career spans a wide range of publishing and information products, services and B2B categories and my operating and consulting experience has largely been with brand-name companies such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Macmillan, Inc., Berlitz International, AARP, R.R. Bowker and Wolters Kluwer.

I have served as a board member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and in addition to my responsibilities at R.R. Bowker, l also served as Chairman of the International ISBN Executive Committee.